Are Middle-Schoolers Ready for Spiritual Armor and Warfare?

Many of my teen Bible lessons focus on Spiritual matters. Today I am working on a website page containing these lessons: Spiritual Warfare, Spiritual Armor, and “In The World But Not Of The World.”

Middle School age kids are just now beginning to grasp the abstract spiritual aspects of the Bible.

It’s not surprising that so much false information exists about what many consider the spooky, mystic, and supernatural aspects of the Bible. People are desperate to find ways of alleviating their suffering and improve their situations by any means. They will eagerly follow teachings of people who say you can “pray scripture” that will cause God to act in a way that benefits them.

Since natural ways have not caused most people to become outrageously prosperous they will quickly grab hold of super-natural methods that promise to fulfill their sinful desires with little effort.

Christians need to avoid falling into this trap and concerned pastors and teachers do well to steer away from these false gospels. However, The Bible is clear, there is a Spiritual Realm. While the spiritual realm and the physical world are separated, events in the spiritual realm can effect events in the physical world.

Is there empirical proof? No. But, there is plenty of testimonial evidence in the Bible and it is integral with Christianity’s beliefs of Heaven, hell, the resurrection of Jesus, and life after death. Why would a Christian believe in all of these things and not believe in demons, demonic possession, or powers of the dark world.
It’s easy and safe to believe in cherub baby’s with little bows and arrows. We might even put a figurine from Hobby Lobby in our garden. But real angels might be a lot more dangerous and fierce than that.

The Bible provides Spectacular Spiritual Armor.

You’ve probably heard or read Ephesians 6:10-17 dozens of time. I’ll bet you know it by memory. Knowing it is one thing, putting it on is another. Have you ever asked how to put on spiritual armor? Do you just assume you have it?

What does Spiritual Warfare look like?

Do you just dismiss thoughts about the spiritual realm because you are not in it, can’t see it, or just too busy with earthly things to care?

Kids from abusive or broken homes are in the midst of spiritual warfare. Bullying is spiritual warfare. Anything that effect their heart, view of God and faith in Christ is spiritual warfare. The enemy is winning bad. Youngsters need to get armored up as soon as possible.

Knowing Scripture is the key to Spiritual Armor

I always hope that children of this age group can read well but experience has taught me otherwise. Reading to kids at a young age is very helpful to them because they know how the language is supposed to sound. Inflection, punctuation, Bible vocabulary is improved when parents read the Bible to their children.

Impress upon the parents the urgency of reading and discipling their kids. Here is more information to help with that. This may need to be the main focus of your youth ministry.

Trust the Holy Spirit with their hearts

You can only do what you can do. Lay the knowledge before them but trust the Holy Spirit to get it into their hearts.

Teaching kids about God and Jesus, trying to instill a faith of their own, is not like teaching math in school. The methods are completely different. You need their parents involvement.